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quite sufficient to answer all our anticipations when he produced eleven brace and a half of grouse, two brace and a half of mountain hares, a brace of ptarmigan, and-0, delicious morsel !-a golden plover, plump, and praying, doubtless, to be eaten. To which being added the forlorn little rabbit and the hares we slaughtered, provided us with a tolerable larder.

Should this simple and unostentatious account of game, should this humble, but nevertheless truthful picture of pleasures long passed, but not forgotten, meet the eye of many a sportsman, possessor of a wellpreserved grouse ground, he will, doubtless, turn up the tip of his nose, or the balls of his eyes, at our sporting pretensions. We think we see him now, with a curl on the lip and a smile on his physiognomy at the sum total we have named. Let him smile on. We have, all humility in saying so, seen as many grouse fall to the deadly aim of first-rate shots as our neighbours, but we cannot admit that the useless slaughter which sometimes takes place at the commencement of the grouse season can be termed sport; we have heard of a hundred, and even more, brace being killed by a single gun on the 12th of August. But, in good faith, the labour of the shooter must have been that of a coalheaver; and a third of his birds not worth the powder wasted on them. We prefer sport for sporting sake: and were we the owner of the very best grouse moor in all Scotland, we should feel quite satisfied with five and twenty brace as the ultimatum of each day's shooting, even at the commencement of the season; but in the later period of autumn, to which we allude, half that number ought to satisfy the best shot in England; and these should be killed without the necessity of making a toil of a pleasure. Eat your breakfast, then you require no luncheon on the hills; then take the rest of the day, and come in time to dress for dinner. You may follow all the courtesies of life even in a Highland glen. We shall, however, as we continue our walk over the heathered hills, endeavour to give some careful details of many of the sporting quarters it has been our good fortune to visit; and this, we hope, in such manner as to excite those who have not already enjoyed the sports of the Highlands, to make acquaintance with the grouse; and, as far as possible, we will also enter into such little facts as will point out to them where the best quarters, and how and at what price obtained.

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THE FETE AND TOURNAMENT HISTORIQUE AT ST. OMER, ON THE 15th AND 16th OF JUNE.

At five o'clock of the morning of the 15th of June, 1846-which I presume will be about fifteen days before your publication-eight English travellers, having previously agreed with Monsieur Angles, the Newman of Boulogne, to furnish two britskas and a relay of horses at Eceuills, set out on a bon voyage, as the French term it, to the ancien town of St. Omer, to enjoyé the Fête Historique, or Entrée de Guillaume Cliton XIV., Count de Flandre, et Tournoi-offert à ce prince en l'honneur de son joyeux avénement. The road by Eceuills to St. Omer is not the usual poste road, but is much more delightful, being through La Capelle, by the Bois de Boulogne, over a very hilly country, rising gradually for the whole distance, and passing through a continuous line of richly clothed hedges and umbrageous foliage, encircling and shielding from the sun the voyageur and the agriculturist, who, in this district, boasts of some of the broadest, best cultivated lands and richest corn crops in all France. Thirty miles in five hours, deducting our stay for déjeuné, was not bad travelling; and the equipage was in every respect equal to an Epsom turn out, not omitting the well-filled hamper with the poulets, jambon, langue, patie de veau, gateaux, salade, vins, et cetera, et cetera. The occasion of this fête was to celebrate the historical recollection arising out of the following circumstances.

On the fourteenth of April, 1127, William of Normandy, in history surnamed Cliton, arrived at St. Omer. On that occasion

the whole of the inhabitants of the town and environs assembled to welcome the entrée of the Prince. This Prince was the son of William the Conqueror; by birth he was destined to a brilliant heritage-no less than the crowns of Normandy and England-by his father Robert Comteheuse; but being deposed by his uncle, Henry I., who usurped the Conqueror's thrones, the young prince, after an unsuccessful attempt to recover his rights, claimed the sovereignty of Flanders, then vacant by the death of Charles le Bon, the thirteenth count, he having left no issue, and eventually enforced his claim by triumphing over several competitors, whose paternity sprung from Baudoin de Lille, the seventh count, and Louis le Gros, through his marriage with Jeane de Montferrat Uterine, sister of Queen Adelaide, supported by the king of France. The prince was at this period noble and brave in character, and twenty-six years of age, with a very fine person. On his taking the oath of inauguration, there were great fêtes and tournoi given upon his entrance into Bruges Lille, à Béthena, and à Thérouaure, and also at St. Omer. His great merit was granting a charter and

THE FETE AND TOURNAMENT HISTORIQUE AT ST. OMER.

109

confirmation of privileges to all Flanders, assimilating their rights with those of France.

PROGRAMME.

At break of day the ringing of the bells announced the commencement of the fête; at eight o'clock in the morning the two mayors of St. Omer, attended by their échevins, met in the great hall of the Hotel de Ville, and published the order of the ceremonies, commanding the same to be read by the heralds in the different quartiers of the town. The joyous troops of musicians, consisting of the Chatelains de St. Omer, the military, and other bands belonging to the town, paraded and performed in the Grand Place. The mayors, with their retinue, preceded by the town trumpeters, then proceeded to the representative of the Prince, and, having invited him to attend the fête in the Grand Place, they retired, and were immediately succeeded by a grand procession of different companies of pages, archers, arquebusiers, bowmen, halberdiers, cavaliers, and esquires, all habited in the ancien costume of 1127, who, arranging themselves in front of his residence, prepared to escort him to the reception in the Grand Place. The heralds then proceeded to make proclamation in all quartiers, of the arrival of the prince. The ceremony of reception and inauguration being over, the prince was conducted by a grand procession of knights, templars, chevaliers, esquires, pages, &c., &c., amounting to five hundred persons in various costume, to his residence; and the heralds then proclaimed a suspension of armes until four o'clock, when the grand procession met with their full bands, trophies, banners, castles, triumphal cars, and great additional force of characters, and proceeded to make a circuit of the town, finally resting in the Grand Place. This procession was really beautiful; the eccentricity of the costume, its historical accuracy-the order of the arrangement, the enriched banners, the trappings and housings of the horsemen and horses-four hundred in number-the quietude and sobriety of delight which the people everywhere exhibited, and the admirable precision with which a line of procession extending for a full mile and a half was conducted without the least noise or dis. arrangement, or police or military assistance, was, to an Englishman, truly wonderful; the day was suited to the scene, and a more brilliant spectacle it has never been my good fortune to witness. On Tuesday the tournament took place on the Bruyère, or Champ du Tournoi; but from the great heat and exhaustion of the previous day, and there being only one procession, the sight was not so brilliant as on the Monday. The tilting was spiritedly represented by some of the artillery corps, who were engaged for the occasion; there was no queen of beauty to honour and reward the victor, who received his wreath and scarf from the hands of the prince. Upon the whole it was a most brilliant and gratifying sight; and if some of the dresses and armour were not so expensively wrought as at the Eglington tournament, they were equally characteristic, and much more numerous, at one time numbering nearly twelve hundred persons, horse and foot.

C. M. W.

SOUND AND UNSOUND HORSES.

BY HARRY HIEOVER.

DOWN IN THE HIP.

This is an occurrence that arises from accidents of various sorts, and, where it does not exist in any great degree, seldom interferes with the utility of the animal. It consists in one hip-bone being lower than the other. Many horses have been purchased with this deformity without its having been observed; for it is sometimes very difficult to detect when standing by the side of the animal, and may exist, though in so trifling a degree as to be hardly perceptible when the horse is even looked at behind. I will not take upon myself so much of the province of the professional examiner as to say whether a horse thus situated would be held as a sound one as a matter of law, but as a matter of opinion, on the honour of the thing, I should say thus much, and, I hope, act up to it. Persons in taking a warranty of soundness have a right to expect a horse to be, at the time of sale, sound; and further, that he shall have nothing about him that is the effect of present or former accident, ailment, or formation contrary to the general rule of nature. This is what most persons expect; but I should say the man who made all this a sine quâ non in purchasing, would be one who had purchased very few horses indeed, for he will rarely find one coming strictly up to this criterion of soundness, nor would perhaps the horse that did be worth one shilling more than one that from some trifling cause did not. But if the man did expect this, and the person selling knew he did, and at the same time sold him a horse that he knew the other would not purchase if he was aware of some imperfection the animal had, as a matter of honour I think he is bound to mention it; if not, he is certainly selling an imperfect thing where a perfect one is expected; in short, does not realize the understood compact between two parties. If, therefore, I sold a horse down in one hip without mentioning the circumstance, though the horse would most probably be to all intents and purposes sound, I should, if requested to do so, certainly hold myself bound in honour to take him back.

If slightly affected in this way, and it had been of some time standing, so that no danger of inflammation need be feared from friction of the affected parts, I should not object to purchase such a horse. How far, when it was of magnitude enough to be unsightly, a man might choose to sacrifice look to price, remains for the purchaser to determine.

If after being worked, whether a week or an hour, a horse down on a hip evinced the slightest symptom of lameness or stiffness, it is all but unnecessary to say he is a decided unsound one, and returnable.

WOUNDS IN A GENERAL WAY.

However severely a horse may have been wounded, though it may have left a seam of most unsightly appearance, if he is radically cured

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